I had the Ai on bright, doing a map on the Milky Way with all techs researched for everyone. I was the humans using the Federalist Party. Everyone was doing soo much better than me that I dind't even have enough money to give in to their demands and had to give up a planet for my safety. No military at all to call my own, I was busy building up my planets.
You can imagine the surprise they got when I spent a half hour making ships to counter theirs. With a powerful economy for my war machine, self-reliant and no trade, I ahnilated two races from the galaxy withen 10 turns.
I then slowly made my way across the galaxy until I ahnilated 2 Dread Lord planets and took out the Peacekeepers. My might was soo powerful that the last two races gave up.
I suppose the point of the story is is that you may start out really badly with no ships to your name, but when you build up the economy that is your greatest weapon because that feeds your war machine and in some cases forces other races bankrupt.